{"id":715,"date":"2010-12-07T14:25:47","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T13:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=715"},"modified":"2010-12-08T11:26:08","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T10:26:08","slug":"michael-youngs-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Michael Young&#8217;s vision? Harold Wilson&#8217;s pet?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/meritocracy.bmp\" ><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-716\" title=\"meritocracy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/meritocracy.bmp\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>On his<a href=\"http:\/\/www.labourlist.org\/michael-young-socialism-as-social-entrepreneurship\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.labourlist.org');\"> blog<\/a> Labour Party activist Paul Richards argues that modern Britain has been shaped by the movements and institutions that Michael Young (1915-2002) inspired. Young, he suggests\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>added to the sum of civil society by launching new entrants to it. By empowering individuals through new forms of organization, he hoped to build new forms of egalitarian community&#8230; Young\u2019s ideas were often the spark, but his gift was to be able to cut loose his creations as fast as possible, and allow new people to take over. He launched ships; he didn\u2019t captain them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While\u00a0\u00a0a recognition\u00a0of Young&#8217;s\u00a0enthusiasm\u00a0to broaden educational opportunities\u00a0is welcome, there may be some who will take issue with Paul Richards proposal that The Open University is one of a number of institutions which \u2018owe everything to Young\u2019s vision\u2019. <!--more-->There were not many founders of the OU, but even selecting just from within the ranks of the Labour Party the names of Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson should be mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>This point has been made by others. Denis Lawton, called the\u00a0OU &#8216;a very rare example of socialist ideas of equality and community being applied to the elitist world of higher educaiton Wilson has not always been given sufficient credit for this initiative&#8217;.\u00a0 Ben Pimlott said of the\u00a0OU that &#8216;it was Wilson who made the running. The Open University became his pet scheme&#8230;&#8217; (Denis Lawton, <em>Education and Labour Party ideologies 1900-2001 and beyond<\/em>, RoutledgeFalmer, Abingdon,2005, p. 70; Ben Pimlott, <em>Harold Wilson<\/em>, HarperCollins, London, 1992 p. 514).\u00a0\u00a0On 7th December, the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/politics\/2010\/12\/07\/open-university-faces-84million-in-cuts-115875-22766691\/\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.mirror.co.uk');\">Daily Mirror<\/a><\/em>, in a report suggesting\u00a0that The Open University will face \u00a384m worth of funding cuts, called Wilson the creator of the OU.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Wilson-and-Lee.jpg\" ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On his blog Labour Party activist Paul Richards argues that modern Britain has been shaped by the movements and institutions that Michael Young (1915-2002) inspired. Young, he suggests\u00a0 added to the sum of civil society by launching new entrants to it. By empowering individuals through new forms of organization, he hoped to build new forms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[7,3,5],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-origins","tag-wilson","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}